In Texas, Black Means Future Danger

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If the state of Texas executes Duane Buck, it’ll be because he is black.

Well, mainly it will be because in 1995, he shot his ex-girlfriend, Debra Gardner, and her friend, Kenneth Butler, to death at Gardner’s Houston home, and also wounded his own stepsister, Phyllis Taylor. But it will also be because he’s black.

In Texas, they have this rule: A jury contemplating the death penalty must evaluate the likelihood a defendant poses a future danger to the community. Jurors in Buck’s trial were told he poses said danger because he is a black man.

Mind you, this came from a defense witness, whose ultimate finding was that Buck himself represented little danger. But, said psychologist Dr. Walter Quijano, “It’s a sad commentary that minorities, Hispanics and black people are overrepresented in the criminal justice system.”

So Buck sits on death row awaiting an appeals court ruling on his bid for a new sentencing hearing. Not a new trial, you understand. No one disputes his guilt — or the monstrousness of his crime. But about the sentence, there is plenty dispute, enough that his surviving victim and Linda Geffin, a prosecutor who helped convict him, both think he should get a new hearing. In 2000, Sen. John Cornyn, then Texas attorney general, identified six capital cases, including Buck’s, in which Quijano gave similar testimony and conceded the state erred in allowing race to be used as a sentencing factor.

The other five defendants — all black or Hispanic — received new sentencing hearings. All were re-sentenced to death. Buck was denied a new hearing.

Why? Bucks’ attorney, Christina Swarns, director of the Criminal Justice Project at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, says the only explanation she’s heard “is it’s because Quijano was called as a defense witness. That would sound like a plausible explanation, if not that Quijano was called as a defense witness in two of the other cases in which they did concede error.”